Unofficial news and tips about Google

November 10, 2007

Translation Widgets for Your Site

Both Microsoft and Google added widgets for translating your web page into another language. The feature was already available at BabelFish, but the site makes a major faux-pas by using flags to represent languages.

Microsoft's widget (the second one from the screenshot) uses a translation system from Systran and offers 25 language pairs. The widget seems to work only in Internet Explorer and it consists of a dropdown that includes the message "Translate this page" in the available languages.

Google's widget uses a machine translation system developed by Google, that's available for 29 language pairs. The widget works in most browsers and it's actually a Google gadget loaded in an iframe. What I don't like about this widget is that Google cares so much about its branding that it includes a logo for "Google Translate", a link to information about embeddable gadgets and an option to "get this gadget". Microsoft doesn't add any branding to the widget.

Even if it's not flawless, Google's translation system is more scalable and we should see more languages added in the future. And maybe there are better options than adding a translation widget to your page: a mechanism built in your browser that automatically translates all the web pages to your native language or to a language you know.

While the flags may not be what everyone may like... it is certainly easier for a visitor to understand that if they click their flag of origin chances are the page is going react.Either changes in currency or language.

The problem with flags is that a language isn't necessarily restricted to a territory. What if I speak French, but I live in Belgium or Canada? The French flag doesn't represent me, so why would I choose it?

In some countries, there's more than one official language, so a flag can't identify any language. There's no one-to-one correspondence between languages and countries (flags).

I have already suggested another "widget" for Google machine which appears simple and smart.From french there are 2 pairs only but the idea is better than the one of today : the translator is both evident and discret.

Please have a glance to ... and eventually copy the Google source code inside.http://royalartillerie.blogspot.com

When I see the Microsoft widget from my German system, it showed up with "Diese Seite übersetzen" which works great for me. I've played with my browser language settings a bit and could see that the language in the drop-down menu adjusts to the user's browser language (which makes a lot of sense). It also worked on my FF browser. I don't know about Opera, though.

I wish they would come up with a Farsi translator that I could put on my site. I have some friends there, and I already have the Arabic translator. Oh well. I guess they're not as much into free speech as they are money...

hey all,yeah google translation can be a bit iffy at best.. but ive found a super solution and have been running it successfully on my upgraded blog http://JamieDunne.com/blog for a few months now. Its a WP Widget that allows you to translate any page and visitors STAY on your site... and better still all the new translated language pages get cached so google and other search engines pick up on it... im getting 10xMore traffic because of it.. Check it out out my blog.. its provided free by Nothing2Hide... enjoy.

I use the Google translate a web page function a lot and it's ok except that I use forums that require that you be logged in and if you use the Google translated page the forums don't consider you to be logged in.

I'd really like a page translator that let's you see the page in the language of your choice while still being logged in.

Alternately, a split screen page translator that has the original language on the top and the translated version on the bottom. The translated version would use the untranslated but logged in page as the source for the translation.

As you followed links in the untranslated window, the translation window would update automatically.

there's an encoding problem w/this widget in IE (pls see http://www.mta.info/lirr/, widget is on left column.. some languages with non-western chars don't display correctly), this problem occurs only in IE, FF is fine.. is there a way to fix this for IE?

Yes, I simply never to look at any widget which promote their brand any at all. Its like even you open up an automobile showroom but the stickers/labels/banners all are coming from the botanical school. Lack of customization allowed/none at all which makes Google widget being abandoned instead of its quality. Here in this century, we people never look at the usage as is, we also look at their appearance/beauty as well.

I prefer to find pure manual translation by human brain as my materials are sort of difficulties for machine translation online, which come from narrow fields. If the automotive translation can select the exact synonym, I will give up a long term translation partner although their service is at comparatively low price. But I think this will be a long term struggle of human being's brain to itself.

I am using google translator for my php site in english. Its working fine with main pages but when i try to post a form and get redirected to other page i got that page in english only. Same way ajax is not working on the changed page.

Am I loosing anything?? or it is the functionality??Is there any way to solve it out??>